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The first time I visited the offices of our support desk, shortly after taking up the role of IT Projects office manager in 2005, I was shocked to see nude calendars pinned to the walls. Nobody, it seemed, found that strange.

By the time I moved under their umbrella nearly four years later, every trace of the pin-ups had been removed. Perhaps that was because they now had a female manager, lead-developer and tech support. Or maybe someone just decided it didn’t look very professional.

Regardless, there was still an unmistakable lad culture bubbling away beneath the surface. The Sun — newspaper of choice in our office — provided the team with an unceasing stream of titillation and prejudice, liable to animate many a lunchtime conversation.

Fortunately, my little team of developers was confined to a neighbouring office, so we could concentrate on code away from the racket of the support teams. All we had to contend with were the pronouncements of the Office Gossip, regaling us of another made-up fact she’d just read in the Daily Mail.

Reading of my alarm, many men my age would respond with a question not just of “What’s wrong with that?” but also, “What’s wrong with you?” After all, that was in the era of FHM and Loaded magazine, described as giving guys what they wanted, meaning mostly photos of women in their underwear, interspersed with fitness advice and a few photos of sports cars.

To answer that question, “What’s wrong with you?” you’d probably have to look to my background. I was raised in a very different culture to that one, with completely different expectations around behaviour. Not only was my entire family near and far comprised of practising Christians, but also included ordained clergy and lay preachers.

At home, there were firm restrictions on what we were allowed to watch on television. Tabloid newspapers did not enter the house. Our entire social lives revolved around the church, or wholesome activities like orchestra and cadets. There was no question of us engaging in casual sexual relationships; intimacy was to be reserved for marriage alone.

To top it off, my mother was amongst the first group of female priests ordained in the Church of England. There was no way we could not have a progressive attitude towards the role of women in society. My mother worked extremely hard, both raising four kids and working as a respected chaplain at the local hospital. We all knew what was expected of us: to study hard and behave.

Lad culture, therefore, found no fertile ground in our family. My best friend at college tried to get me into the underage clubbing scene, but I knew that was impossible. My one social outlet outside college was attending a Christian youth club on a Sunday night.

Even at university, far away from home, there was no way I could countenance breaking with family tradition. There could be no posters of girls on my wall. No copies of FHM stashed beneath my pillow. Two exceptions — the cover of Spearhead’s album Home and Casandra Wilson’s New Moon Daughter — earned me a fierce rebuke from my eldest brother.

After all, his was the model we all sought to emulate. He met his wife-to-be in his school sixth-form. He first proposed to her just months after they met, and numerous times over the years that followed until he emerged from education a qualified solicitor. She was from a good Christian family too, enabling the honourable relationship sanctified by marriage we all yearned for.

So it is that two decades of lad culture all but passed us by. Yet we know it was a tangible movement, embraced by an entire generation. That’s why the righteous indignation witnessed this past week rings hollow. All that is now condemned as improper was out in the open for all to see. Indeed it was promoted by the very media which now seeks to distance itself from it, pretending that was another era, far off in a distant epoch, long forgotten.

No it wasn’t. It was the culture sold to young men like me throughout our twenties and thirties as the ideal men and women were to aspire to. I didn’t respond, because I couldn’t: not with a family like mine. But the majority did, embracing it with a jokey enthusiasm, which turned women into objects equal in weight to a Porsche 911 Turbo, to be pinned to office walls.

It’s no wonder that today, many still can’t understand what all the fuss is about. To them it’s just harmless fun. “Isn’t that how we all behaved when we were young?” they ask. “Before we settled down and became sensible adults, with responsibilities, kids and a mortgage to pay. Weren’t we all just like that back then?”

It was another time, as yet unenlightened. Or perhaps enlightened, unlike the present, which is an age of darkness and retribution. Depends on your perspective or point of view.